Evening Brief: Gun bills and being ‘Boyled’

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Good evening to you.

The Lead:

We begin today with being in the dark: The Privy Council Office says it was not aware former Taliban captive Joshua Boyle was under police investigation before he and his family met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

That information was obtained via an order paper question submitted to the House of Commons by Conservative MP Jamie Schmale.

“The Privy Council Office was made aware on January 1st, 2018, that Joshua Boyle had been arrested and charged by the Ottawa Police Service for several Criminal Code offences,” it reads.

Trudeau met with Boyle, his American wife Caitlan Coleman, and their three children in his Parliament Hill office on Dec. 18. On Dec. 30, Ottawa police laid 15 criminal charges against Boyle, including eight counts of assault, two counts of sexual assault, two counts of unlawful confinement and one count each of misleading police, uttering a death threat and administering a noxious substance. Janice Dickson has the details.

In Canada:

Short, but sweeping: That sums up the bill Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale tabled today to reinstate key controls over guns sales and assault-style rifles the previous Conservative government struck down when it dismantled the long gun registry. Bill C-71, fulfills several Liberal gun-control promises from the 2015 election, including a requirement that gun retailers renew meticulous records of long gun sales, which would be accessible only to police and law officials. According to officials who briefed media on the bill, police would not be allowed access to the gun sale records without a search warrant, production order or another form of court supervision. Tim Naumetz reports.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau says he’s “satisfied” with the plans Canada’s two largest railways have put forward to get Western Canadian grain moving again – even as Prairie farmers say the documents are not detailed enough. Kelsey Johnson has that story.

Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan dismissed criticism today that Canada’s year-long commitment to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali is too short. That comes a day after he and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced Canada will send Griffon combat and Chinook transport helicopters to the West African nation. When asked why Canada is pledging only one year to the UN mission when Germany has committed three, Sajjan told iPolitics: “This is about, in the UN, what we call smart pledges.” Dickson reports.

Canada’s budget watchdog predicts the $51 billion the federal government is spending on personnel this year will fall nearly $5 billion over the next five years. A report released by Parliamentary Budget Office Jean-Denis Frechette found the overall compensation bill for federal employees is declining because of flat growth in the public service and rising interest rates, which have drastically reduced the future pension and benefit costs that have dogged governments for the past five years. More from Kathryn May.

It was 2011 when NDP MP Romeo Saganash first asked about speaking Cree in the House. At the time, Saganash, the first Cree MP ever elected, was told it was “not possible.” Today, seven years later, Saganash appeared before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to help them figure out just that: how to facilitate Indigenous language use in House of Commons proceedings. “If there’s a will to do it, I think it’s possible,” Saganash told iPolitics. Rachel Gilmore reports.

Air passenger rights advocate Gabor Lukacs thinks Canadian fliers may have to wait a lot longer on tarmacs, and that the Senate is his best hope for changes to the government’s so-called bill of rights for airline passengers. The Canadian standard for the amount of time airlines can hold passengers on the tarmac without food or water is generally 90 minutes. The government’s bill seems to extend that time to three hours. Lukacs told the Senate Transport Committee today that Bill C-49, a piece of legislation to amend the Canadian Transportation Act, is “a step backward.” The House of Commons Transport Committee, where Lukacs appeared in September, passed the bill with no amendments. That committee is dominated by Liberal MPs. Leslie MacKinnon reports.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland is calling again for the widow of a Canadian-Iranian professor who died in a Tehran prison to be allowed to return home. “Canada is gravely concerned that Maryam Mombeini’s travel ban was not lifted over the weekend,” Freeland said in a statement issued this morning. “We continue to call on Iranian authorities to immediately give Maryam Mombeini, a Canadian citizen, the freedom to return home,” she said. Dickson has that story too.

In Ontario today, within the span of a few minutes Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford flip-flopped on whether his party’s campaign platform will run a deficit. He spoke to reporters for less than four minutes in his first media availability since becoming leader on March 10. About the platform, Ford first said “yeah it’s going to be balanced.” A minute later when asked if he was committing to not having a deficit he said “lets take a look.” Adding that he wanted to speak with his caucus first. More from Marieke Walsh.

Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corp. has hired a ninth lobbyist to help them secure federal funding for “the development of two processing facilities” in Alberta — one for propane dehydrogenation and the second for polypropylene. That and more in this week’s lobby wrap.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, most people saw this one coming (or at least suspected this is where things were headed) when Judy Foote stepped down as an MP this past summer: There was word today she’s going to be the province’s new lieutenant-governor. Sources told CBC News this morning that the former federal cabinet minister will be the first female vice-regal representative. She stepped down from cabinet in August and as MP in the fall. As minister of Public Works and Procurement Canada, she had been on a leave of absence since April due to family health issues. She’d hoped to return, but out of concern for her children, said she wanted to stay home to be closer to them. She herself had battled breast cancer twice while in office.

President Donald Trump started the day by calling up good friend Vlad to congratulate him on his electoral victory over the weekend. The Kremlin said the discussion with President Putin was “constructive” and “businesslike.”

Sen. John McCain was quick to call that out. In a statement, he said Trump’s call was an insult to “every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country’s future.” He added: “An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections.” Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was unimpressed. He said Putin’s victory reminded him of “the elections they used to have in almost every communist country where whoever the dictator was at the moment always got a huge percentage of the vote. So calling him wouldn’t have been high on my list.”

On the day Stormy Daniels polygraph report was released, a bunny came hopping out of the woodwork. There was word today former Playboy model Karen McDougal is suing to be released from an agreement mandating her silence. She alleges she had a 10-month affair with Trump and is suing the company that kept her original account from publication. She’s the latest woman to take legal action over an agreement restricting her from speaking out about an alleged relationship with Trump prior to his time in government. The White House has said Trump denies the affair. This lawsuit was first reported by The New York Times earlier today.

Meanwhile, a New York judge has rejected a bid by President Donald Trump to dismiss a lawsuit relating to his alleged groping of Summer Zervos, a contestant on “The Apprentice,” in 2007. Lawyers for Trump argued he was immune from the suit in state court while serving as president, but the judge was having none of it and said there was “absolutely no authority” to justify tossing out litigation over “unofficial conduct.” Politico reports.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was placed in custody today as part of an investigation into allegations he received millions of euros in illegal campaign financing from the regime of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. A judicial source with direct knowledge of the case said Sarkozy was being held at the Nanterre police station, North-West of Paris. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Sarkozy has vehemently and repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the case, which involves funding for his winning 2007 presidential campaign. That story from The Associated Press.

It’s been a few weeks since the Trudeau’s returned from a less than stellar jaunt to India. But it seems the smallest, scene-stealing star of the show is still making headlines. He might cringe at some of these shots one day, but we think little Hadrien is a hoot — and we’re all for him hamming it up.